What happens when I put a deposit into my wallet, while my computer is offline?

Lets say for example, I automatically deposit btc from a pool to the wallet on my computer, but I shut my computer down for a week/month/ or whatever.
Will the Bitcoins be in some kind of "cloud" until my computer/wallet is online again?
How does this work?

2 Answers
2

Bitcoins are stored in a decentralized ledger called the blockchain. When your computer is shutdown the blockchain stores the balance in your associated public key also known as an address. If you are using the reference client (Bitcoin-qt) you will be able to spend your Bitcoins once the computer is turned back on and the blockchain has downloaded all of the transactions that have occurred since it was turned off. So while your PC is off yes you can still receive Bitcoins because the rest of the network has seen the transaction that is incoming to your address and they will continue to store that information indefinitely.